How to Get Rejected Every Time

Submitting your art or craft work to a jury? Here’s how to guarantee your results.

1.Wait until the last minute. In fact – be fashionably late. You’ll get more notice that way, and probably make a bigger impact, right?

2. Don’t worry about the instructions. No need to concern yourself with the details, because shows and exhibitions are all pretty much the same. Just submit whatever you have at hand and let them sort it out. Isn’t that what their office staff is for, anyway?

3. Photos? No sweat. Send dark photos. Or overexposed. Better yet, blurry. Double check to make sure you have a poor layout. Add in some questionable pieces that may or may not have been handmade, or even made by you.

4. DIY. Make sure you shoot the photos yourself, with your artwork shown in your backyard, or even in front of the local freeway. Don’t bother to crop them.

5. Mix and match. Show the whole broad range of what you can do. Send some of your oil paintings, a few pieces of pottery and some fiber art that you also make in your spare time. A great way to show just how diverse your talent is!

6. Let them do the legwork. If your submission is online, just send a link to your website. Tell them, “check it out and see what you like. Then get back to me.”

7. No problem. Don’t hassle yourself with that bio request – a sentence ought to do it. And, leave blank spaces in your application. Lots and lots of blank spaces.

8. Do a retrospective. Send in photos of your work completed twenty years ago. After all, you submitted the exact images last year, so maybe they will remember you!

9. Need a booth photo? Include that dark shot of your soggy tent from the rainy show where you had nothing better to do.

10. Creative finances. If you haven’t got the cash, just skip the application fee for now. They can bill you later.

Comments

….11. Remind them that you were the one to pack up and leave in the middle of the day during their previous show because, “it just wasn’t working for me last year, I’m sure this year will be better!”).